The need for screening of individuals to establish certain minimum visual skills is well established in industry. This need is especially acute for persons serving as visual inspectors wherein an article of manufacture or the like is approved or disapproved based upon a visual inspection conducted by such person. Other individuals whose performance relies on various visual skills include pilots, welders, machinists, etc.
Recent trends in industry have given rise to "self inspection" of finished articles wherein the worker producing the article also is responsible for the inspection thereof. In order to qualify as a visual inspector, it is frequently required that the worker undergo some form of visual skills testing to establish at least a minimum level of proficiency required for the particular inspection to be performed. The administration of such visual skills testing to a significant portion of the workforce at a large industrial location will be appreciated by those skilled in the art as being a significant burden on the local health care facility usually charged with such testing.
Traditional methods of testing, for example, visual acuity, rely on the standard eye chart held a fixed distance from the test subject's eyes. The chart is inscribed with rows or columns of letters or E-shaped figures oriented variously and which the subject must either read or indicate the orientation of each shape. Levels of visual acuity skills are demonstrated by properly describing characters of a certain size on the chart.
Even this simple test has several drawbacks when applied to a large number of test subjects. First, administration of the test requires not only the presence of the test subject, but also a trained test administrator who typically directs the test subject, records the subject's responses, and may even analyze those responses for determining whether or not the subject has demonstrated the required visual acuity skills. Another drawback to the traditional eye chart and derivatives thereof is that the test is essentially the same for all subjects, leading to the possibility that an individual may obtain advanced knowledge of the arrangement of characters and merely recite the characteristics from memory rather than by observation during the test.
Other visual skills which may be tested, for example color recognition and depth perception, require an equal or greater time commitment by both the test subject and the test administrator. For an industrial site having several thousands of individuals who must be periodically screened for minimum visual requirements, the cost in terms of lost production and additional medical personnel required can be prohibitive.
Another level of complexity occurs when the required level of visual skills varies from worker to worker, thus requiring modification of the visual skills screening testing depending upon the individual requirements. A further perspective on the overall testing requirement is gained by noting that despite all the complexity of the various screening tests, changing requirements, interpretation of results, there will typically be only a very small percentage of test subjects whose vision has deteriorated such since the last screening test as to require corrective equipment or decertification.
What is needed is a system and means for conducting visual skills screening of a large number of individuals for identifying those individuals who require further testing by a skilled vision professional.